"SilverStone is back with its latest air cooled heatsink unit for today's desktop processors. As far as size goes, the HE02 heatsink is mammoth. Along with the huge heatsinks we often find installation and compatibility issues. SiliverStone speaks to designing the HE02 in order to ease those pains. How well does it work though?"

Olivier of FanlessTech notified us of a recent SilverStone passive CPU cooler. If you would prefer to jam your case with a giant piece of metal than hear a fan whine -- you should read on. I must say, this gets me interested.

I hope this will continue to be a trend of not needing to trade-off between performance and silence.

It is becoming very difficult to find passive cooling systems for PC parts and it becomes even more difficult if you actually want a good PC when all is said and done. The latest cooler from SilverStone will support CPUs up to 95W which is well over what is required for even the higher-end 77W Ivy Bridge processors.

If only there would be options like this for a GTX 680 or similar GPU.

It is a shame that passive power supplies seem to have not crept too far past 500W and that GPU coolers have been getting substantially less and less passive over time. But I guess someone needs to break the ice and I am glad that you will at least have an option for passively cooling higher-end CPUs and maybe we will see that trickle into other high-end PC markets.

The SST-HE02 is expected to cost $70 and will be available late in Q3 of this year.